Sunday May 13, 2012

Here is a sneak peak of what I am working on right now.  There will be a full post when it’s completed.  Been on a major Prince bender lately, inspired by the Citinite “Minneapolis Special” mix posted over at Wax Poetics.  I have been a huge Prince fan since High School and have a fairly large collection of his recordings but this mix has some real gems on it that I had not heard before.

4/15/12 All six iterations in turquoise. Each of these is a unique variation.

To get all of the variations I printed each screen twice in each color, then switched colors and repeated on the dry prints for each of the remaining screens.  I started printing the lightest shade, adding more turquoise for each layer.  Phthalo turquoise is one of my favorite colors.  I first started using it in 2009 with Number 365 and 366.

4/15/12 Two variations with iridescent pearl. Sadly, this does not photograph well.

I did a few prints with a new color I picked up on a whim, iridescent pearl.  I was curious how it would print and I am pleased to say it comes out pretty cool.  It looks great both as an overlay and underneath the more transparent colors such as the blue and orange. Photographing it has proven difficult though.  I have really been feeling the orange lately.  Since painting Number 423 I have been thinking about colors based on how they would look next to orange.

4/15/12 This is one of my favorites from the run.

I did these the next day with some purple:

4/16/12 The purple/orange/green combination is one I will probably revisit soon.

On 4/22/12 I did more experiments with Orange.  This time I mixed the pearl down with black and white for a grey color.  It still maintains some of  the iridescence.

04.22.12 Orange/Turquoise/Grey - three versions

04.22.12 Orange/Purple/Grey - two versions

This next

04.22.12 Orange/Purple/Turquoise - two versions

Finally, I printed this one, which I have been calling “Triple C” because is is a triple print of the 3rd screen.  I have been resisting doing a multiple like this for awhile but I am pleased with the outcome.

04.22.12 Triple C

Picture of my studio on A View from the Easel over at Hyperallergic.com

Jump over to A View from the Easel, an ongoing series at Hyperallergic.com about artist work spaces.

Interview with me about my favorite subjects, art and food

I am pleased to say that I am the featured artist this month over at ArtandArtDeadlines.com.  Click over to read an interview covering art and one of my favorite subjects: food.  Please leave a comment on the blog.  At the end of the year the artist with the most comments is named artist of the year.

Me and my Mustache posing with my painting at the North Carolina Museum of Art

This was taken at the preview night for the Art of the Auction benefit for the museum.  More info on the event is this post.

03.11.12 Turquoise and Red (Negative) Versions A&B

So I finally updated the Available Prints page with all of the recent work.  These prints are now available for sale via my paypal checkout.  The buy now button is located at the bottom of the page for each print. I set the price at $60 + $5 shipping for each of them.  Many of these prints are one of a kind variations.  A few are in small run multiples of a color combination but each is unique, for reasons explained here.  Check these posts for more details on the different runs.

Number 423

Hard to believe it’s the end of March and this is the first painting of 2012, Number 423.  I have been focused on the prints since January so I haven’t spent much time actually painting.  It’s been a lot of fun but I needed to paint.  I am still planning a giant painting on this roll of canvas I have.The plan has been to go very heavily multilinear on that since I will have space to put a lot of lines. This sketch was not dense enough for that size but I really liked it so I painted it at my regular size of 3′x4′.

2012_02_25-_8-00am001

Color

So first off, this is a palette switch from the last group of paintings.  Notably the addition of the orange but also brown instead of yellow and a different pigment green.  My last group had some orangey reds, but everything was squarely on the red end of the spectrum.  This is definitely orange.  I admit it was added because of the red-orange I have been using on the prints.  I loved the effect when used with the purples, turquoise and green.  The other change is the green is chromium oxide which has a matte finish and an earthy tone compared to the bright phthalo green.  It is one of my favorite colors.

Besides the pigment changes, there has been a color pattern change as well.  The previous two sets of paintings used 3-level sets for the interior space but in this painting I am using 2-levels.  This painting has 5 colors in heavy and light saturation pairs, plus orange.  The multilinear red/turquoise/purple/yellow/green paintings from last year (414-422) had two major interior colors and 2 minor interior colors in sets of 3 levels of saturation. Fourth levels of saturation were used for line or background.  The yellow series (406-413) before that had a 5-level major color and two minors.  The interior space of both groups of paintings was limited to 3 saturation levels of each color.

10 colors in light and heavy saturation pairs. At the time that I took this photo I had not yet mixed the big vat of orange.

Pairs of Blue, Turquoise, Purple

Two saturation variants of each color allow for some interesting patterns.  I opted to alternate heavy/light horizontally within color and vertically across color.  Here is what it looked like after I established the major color areas and began to identify the minor color clusters:

One application of each of the color pairs plus the second minor color cluster.

One Coat establishing all the color areas.

Fast forward many hours:

Many coats of paint later...

Music

On a side note I have been on a huge Afrobeat kick lately playing a lot of mid-70s Fela Kuti in the studio on repeat.  Mostly “Gentleman,” “Zombie,” and “Expensive Shit.” This has been interspersed with some of my favorite Brazilian music, long-time obsession “Carlos, Erasmo” by Erasmo Carlos and “Africa Brasil” by Jorge Ben.

Current favorites:

Number 418

This year the event will feature work by more than 160 artists from North Carolina.  The list includes several of my friends from Golden Belt: Harriet Bellows, Warren Hicks and Madelyn Smoak.  Other friends of mine included are Mathew Curran and Cindy Morefield.

The auction preview is Friday, March 30th at 5:30pm.  Admission is free.  More info here.

The auction will be held Saturday, April 14th at 7pm.  More info here.

Don’t mind me, I will just be hanging out in front of the museum’s giant Frank Stella.

http://www.townofchapelhill.org/index.aspx?page=1948